


Fly me to the Moon

by flyingStylo



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Arthur wears it like an undertaker, Eames just wants a holiday, London, M/M, Merrakech, The Penguin Book of Gay Short Stories, Travel Diaries, let's see where this goes
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-10-08
Updated: 2015-10-16
Packaged: 2018-04-22 14:49:41
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 9,532
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4839503
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flyingStylo/pseuds/flyingStylo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>'Stop sending me pictures of naked men in your bed,' Ariadne's message read. 'And by the way, Arthur was asking about you. He's in Levent.'<br/>Eames stared at the screen of his Nexus. The sun over his head was very strong; it was possible he'd misread. He hoped to whatever entity was out there that he'd misread.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Eye of the Tiger

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In traditional Chinese culture, qi (more precisely qì, also chi, ch'i or ki) is an active principle forming part of any living thing.  
> Qi is frequently translated as "natural energy", "life force", or "energy flow". Qi is the central underlying principle in traditional Chinese medicine and martial arts. The literal translation of "qi" is "breath", "air", or "gas". - Wikipedia

 

When all was said and done, Eames was a man who enjoyed being in love.

Not with people - Eames had learned the folly of that early on with Freddie Simmons, when they’d been in 5th form, rosy-cheeked and the collars of their rugby shirts perpetually rumpled -, but with life itself. There were such pleasures to be taken, such senses to be explored and fulfilled. That was what Eames lived for, and every morning he woke a happy man, and every night he went to sleep content. 

So when a casual message from Ariadne buzzed him out of reading _The Penguin Book of Gay Short Storie_ s — what a delightful cover it had — whilst lounging under the palm trees with a lovely cup of mint tea, Eames nearly fell off his chair, just barely stopping his phone from plunging into the fountain he'd been sitting dangerously close to.

Not because of the first part, which was the usual:  _Stop sending me pictures of naked men in your bed. Are they even legal? They better not be younger than me --_  Eames scoffed at that. Who was she kidding? She was still freakishly small, but her students had started to address her as Ma'am; just because she pretended not to hear them didn't mean she didn't look it.

But there was an after-note, written as though tagged on with as little thought as she seemed to give to her daily choice of scarf :  _By the way, Arthur was asking about you. He’s in Levent._

He stared at the string of words on the screen of his Nexus.

The sun was very strong over his head; it was possible he misread. He hoped to whatever entity was out there that he’d misread.

There were many things that had gone wrong with the last job Eames had been on with Cobb — god, that'd been _ages_ ago; he wondered what Fischer was up to now? Not that he was ever really going to catch up; the man had been far too gloomy for any real effort to be spent in looking up his present state of affairs, even taking into consideration the emotional trauma he must have gone through simply by being the son to one of the most I-Honestly-Don’t-Give-A-Shit fathers Eames had ever come across in both work _and_ life —, but at least he had come away from it with one unexpected, rather important knowledge about himself: that he really, really, really hated scowls. And bad temper, and anger tantrums. Cobb had sported all three like a supermodel, and that had left Eames with a permanent case of E.D. wherever it even remotely concerned Dominic Cobb, and, by default association, Arthur.

He had worked with crazy before; and he was fine with crazy. It was kind of a minimum prerequisite for anyone seriously in the business of dreamsharing.

But he couldn’t, he had found, abide by bad manners which offended his delicately balanced sensibility for basic beauty and harmony necessary for one’s peace of mind; and being body-fisted into the metal of a wet, hard flank of a taxi by Cobb had definitely broken his zen.

It was in that precise moment, as Cobb broke to him the news of what happens when you die in an underlayer of a dream, flashing a whole new level of crazy-eyes mixed with sweat-rain-spittle-glistening pallor on his face, that Eames swore to himself he’d never work with this inexplicable duo again, skin crawling a little at the feel of Cobb’s junk against the back of his hand that was being held hostage between their legs along with his H&K P2000; and it was to his great relief when, after the job had finished — mostly thanks to Eames’ outstanding professionalism and natural brilliance — it turned out that Cobb really had been doing all the insane corporate espionage shit just for the duration of his run from the US’ criminal justice system, and as soon as he got back home to his children, he quit the business clean and swift and left Arthur hanging without someone to point for.

And as great as all that was, right now, therein lied Eames’ problem.

If Arthur was a cocky, rigid bastard with the expressional range of a bulldog before, he was now a fully-fledged emotional corpse.

It seemed that, in the absence of the most grouchy, bipolar extractor Eames had ever had the displeasure of working with, Arthur had decided to continue the tradition in Cobb’s wake. He'd even started taking an odd extractor’s job or two. After all, what’s a team without a moody, pessimistic leader in charge to make it interesting for everyone else, right? Wrong. So, so wrong.

The world of dreamsharing was slowly but surely changing - Eames could find a handful of fresh-faced, eager and perky 20-something year-old (post)graduates to supplement his team with at the drop of a phone call — usually to Ariadne —; the golden age of renegade pioneers was tapering to an end (except when said pioneer was a professional like Eames; excellence never went out of style), especially if you were an antique with baggage. 

The new generation of wannabe dreamsharers were passionate, competent and genuinely pleasant to be around, and they had more interest in actually making things work than trying and seeing how much shit they could get away with without dying or going insane (and then dying) in the process. 

Gone were the days of eccentric professors and gunmen and thieves - and he kept telling himself that as he typed a shaky-fingered message back to Ariadne.

_And what did you tell him?_

Eames’ temples throbbed as he pressed _send_ ; suddenly it felt very hot.

He never got the answer to that; Morocco was 8 hours ahead of San Francisco, and Arthur was at his doorstep in 3. 

 

“This place is way too easy to find,” Arthur judged, putting down his briefcase on the table with an insensitive clunk. 

"Lovely to see you as always, darling," drawled Eames, in as composed a tone as possible.

He didn’t know why he lied; Yusuf had once postulated that it was due to their middle class English upbringing - it was always better to lie in the face of anyone one found unpleasant. Eames had laughed it off then; but now he was seriously reconsidering the theory, as Arthur dragged out a chair loudly, and Eames managed to keep a smile on his face through the sensation of his cortisol level spiking.

Arthur flumped down into his seat, and with a minimal amount of cursory interest, looked around at the ryad Eames was staying at.

As Eames had spent the last three months here and therefore had no reason to do the same, he took the opportunity to study Arthur: he hadn't changed much since the last time Eames had seen him. Right now, dressed in a grey seersucker suit and a pair of brown oxfords, he looked, to nobody's surprise, spectacularly out of place; when Aicha, in her characteristic amble, came over to see if he wanted anything, he ordered a Perrier. Eames congratulated himself on successfully holding in a snort.

“Seriously, why so close to the markets?” Arthur asked when Aicha had sauntered away, after having exchanged a bewildered look with Eames from behind Arthur’s head. 

“I like the noise,” replied Eames simply, though all they could hear right now was pretty much birdsong and water trickling down the fountain and the occasional donkey-pulled cart clattering by the narrow street outside the ryad’s courtyard.

At that, Arthur looked at him the way he usually did: like Eames was a stain on a perfectly starched shirt refusing to come out.

“Couldn’t you have at least picked a place a bit… Bigger?” he sighed, and took out a blackberry from his jacket pocket presumably to send some message to a who-the-fuck-cares-where.

Feeling his chest tighten at the philistine comment — great, that was really good for your health —, Eames grit his teeth behind the tense smile that was threatening to fall off at any minute. As soon as Arthur was gone, he’d message Yusuf with an admission of the damage their English upbringing had done to their general sense of well-being.

“Can I help you with something?” he forced himself to say, almost wincing at the willpower it took to be civil.

To his surprise, something in Arthur’s eyes faltered just a little bit at the question, fingers slowing.

“As a matter of fact…” he started, voice lowering.

Just then Aicha appeared, a glass of sparkling water on a silver tray, chilled to perfection.

“Is this Perrier?” Arthur asked, looking up at her through a squinted brow. 

“…Yes,” she answered after a moment, staring. “Perrier.”  
   
“Thank you.” 

Aicha walked away, widening her eyes comically at Eames as she did.

Eames felt his face stretch into a smirk, then erased it just in time as Arthur looked up from his phone.

“As I was saying…” Arthur continued, putting the phone back into his breast pocket. “You can, in fact, help me.” 

Eames leaned back, watching as Arthur mustered up whatever it was that he was going to say next.

With a sense of dread, Eames remembered how Arthur had a way of making everything seem harder that it really was; just watching him made Eames feel tired.

“I need a point man,” Arthur said, voice tight and face as grim as ever. 

Eames blinked. 

“I’m sorry, I thought I heard you say—“

“A point man,” repeated Arthur, a little more emphatically this time.

They looked at each other, the usual strain between them back like it had never left.

“Explain that, please,” said Eames, finally.

Arthur seemed to relax somewhat at that, slumping an imperceptible degree into the back of his chair.

“I haven’t worked as point since the job in Croatia. Seems I’m good at extracting, and with Cobb gone, there are a lot of jobs around for a good extractor. I have a point I’ve been working with, but she can’t work this one because she’s just found out she’s been pregnant for 7 weeks. There are other people I could call, but most of them are too green - it’s actually pretty hard to find a good point man.”

Arthur paused there, and took a sip of his water.

Eames was pretty sure the last bit was just Arthur showing off. But he let it go; he was, he had to admit, rather hooked. Mostly on the fact that he had managed to miss so much since the last time he had heard about Arthur; but then, living in the pursuit of pleasure could do that to a man. And in all honesty, Eames had been perfectly happy not knowing; like he said, there were far less uptight and bipolar people to keep up with now. Whenever Arthur or Cobb popped into his head once every blue moon, he reminded himself that he didn’t give a flying toss what they were or were not doing. But now his interest was piqued.

“Why me?” He asked, feeling his eyes begin to twinkle. Yes, he could feel it when his own eyes twinkled; it was one of his many talents. 

Arthur shifted a little in his seat.

"I watched you come up with the plans for the Fischer job, I saw how you handled Cobb when he…kind of lost it after Saito got shot, saw how you kept it together when everyone else was losing their shit, and I liked the way you improvised. You’re thorough, and you’re good at what you do. The way you dress hurts my eyes, but the amount I'm being paid for this job makes it bearable, just. Interested?” 

Eames sat and blinked.

Though he was sure he appeared perfectly cool and relaxed on the outside, his head was reeling. He had never heard anyone say so many good things about him to his face or otherwise without throwing in a bastard or a wanker or, once, a cunt, in there somewhere. And if he had to come up with a list of people who might have done——— Well, he couldn’t, but he was sure Arthur would have been the last to occur to him. The world was full of mysteries. 

“…What’s the time frame?” Eames asked, trying not to sound at all interested. Arthur shifted once again, and crossed his arms over his chest.

“Extraction’s in 3 weeks. A lot of the research’s already been done by my other point up until now, so it should be enough time for you to catch up and take it from where she left off. Got a chemist, and Romi’s on board to build for us."

“Romi?” Eames asked, in spite of himself. “How did you get her?”

"I asked her,” Arthur said simply, voice dripping with disparagement at Eames’ plebeian bewilderment. "Like I said, I’m good at what I do.” 

Without breaking his sideways glance, Arthur lifted his glass and took another couple of gulps. His long, straight fingers were smooth and perfectly manicured; Eames hated him so hard. 

“So, Mr Eames,” Arthur added, putting down his glass with another insensitive clang. “If you’re in, we leave for London tomorrow morning."

“Oh here we go.” Eames threw his head up and bumped his back against the chair's. He knew there had to be a catch: he hated London.

 

The sun was setting by the time Arthur left, muttering something about going to find a real bottle of Perrier, and Eames remained sitting in the same chair, checking out Arthur’s track record for the past year or so as evening settled around the little courtyard Eames had come to grow so fond of. 

As insufferable as he was, it seemed that Arthur really was quite good at what he did; he’d got through more jobs than Cobb had managed within a shorter period of time, and only one had fallen apart; and that was because a member of his team sold them out. No matter how careful you were, it happened. Needless to say, once Arthur got his hands on him - in Borneo, apparently -, the man never saw the light of day again - at least not in anyone else's dream.

His list of clientele was impressive to say the least, and indeed rather intimidating to a fresh-out-of-school newbie. The case he had lined up in London seemed straightforward enough, and the chemist on the team had a solid reputation.

In short, everything seemed in order. And yet…

“You look sad,” offered Aicha, setting down the ryad’s very own home-made briouat by the tea light that’d been laid out about half an hour ago.

Pinching at the bridge of his nose, Eames looked up at her friendly, fierce face from the screen he’d been staring at for too long, to find the familiar eyes sparkling with the kind of life he adored; it had been the real reason he’d chosen to stay here, out of the hundreds of ryads in Marrakech.

“I’m leaving tomorrow,” he explained, admiring the vivid red of the simple caftan she was in. Red was her favourite colour, and Eames agreed with her choice.

“Where are you going?” Aicha asked, crossing her arms, and cocking her hips to lean on one leg. After all the time he’d passed here, Eames still couldn’t tell whether she was angry or concerned.

“London, for a little while."

“London? المنزل؟ (home?)” she bellowed. She was a smart little thing, and had asked which part of London he was from on the first day he had got here.

“Well, not quite home. Work. العمل."

“Ah, so you sad because you have to work?” She leered, rocking back and forth on her heels. Her teeth flashed in the dark, sharp and with a hint of danger. 

“.العمل وسوف تكون قوية؛ الجلوس و سوف نتن” She clicked her tongue and shook her head gleefully.

In Eames’ humble opinion, she enjoyed using proverbs far too much for a 17 year-old; if he'd heard correctly, it meant something like:  _Work and you will be strong; sit and you will stink_. Touché.

“No, I’m sad because I won’t be  _here_. And I’m not sure it will be worth it."

A trace of grin still playing on her face, she studied him with her dark, bright eyes.

“It has something to do with the man who came before?”

Eames nodded, then asked, "What did you think of him?” suddenly curious.

Aicha shrugged.

“He seemed sad, too. Like a… How do you say? .متعهد دفن”

 _Mutah-ahed-daphne_. It meant an undertaker.

"Maybe he gave it to you. Being sad.” 

With a long look, Eames contemplated her.

Against the blue air of dusk tinting the zellige tiles and lit by the tea lights covering the tabletops surrounded by lemon trees, her small, round frame was striking and wonderful.

The thought of taking a picture of her occurred to him then, but he dismissed it momentarily; he would remember this, with his mind’s eye, and see it whenever he needed a little pick-me-up over the next three weeks that was sure to be taxing on his soul.

“Do you want me to bring something when I come back?” he asked, the thought occurring to him.

“From London?” Aicha retorted, eyes going wide and suddenly looking much younger. At times like this, she almost looked her age.

“Yeah. Anything you want in particular?” Eames reclined, cheering up at the prospect of shopping for Aicha. He’d do a tour of Covent Garden first. And the Burlington Arcade. He hadn’t been there for ages; mostly because he hated the gilded snobbery. But the notion of shopping for Aicha in House of Cashmere delighted him. 

She considered for an intense few seconds, worrying at her plump, dark lips free of make-up and staring into the flickering candlelight by Eames’ copy of _The Penguin Book_.

“,لا أعرف” (I don’t know,)” she said finally, shrugging once again. “Bring something you want."

“Okay,” Eames promised, something in his chest warming pleasantly. He felt a little like Daddy Longlegs. Perhaps London wouldn't be _all_ bad, after all.

Then suddenly, there was a hand on his shoulder. He looked up to see Aicha's face, now gone solemn, gazing down at him.

“Don’t worry, Eames. .ما هو هنا في مكان آخر ، ما هو ليس هنا ليس فيها”

And with that, she turned around and strolled away to the kitchen, humming what sounded like an ira song Eames didn’t recognise.

Eames watched her disappear into the building, translating the words in his head.

 _What is here is elsewhere, and what is not here is nowhere_.

Sometimes the girl scared him.

 

 


	2. It's Rainy in London

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The hamsa (Arabic: خمسة khamsah, also romanized khamsa, meaning lit. "five") is a palm-shaped amulet popular throughout the Middle East and North Africa, and commonly used in jewelry and wall hangings. Depicting the open right hand, an image recognized and used as a sign of protection in many societies throughout history, the hamsa is believed to provide defense against the evil eye. - Wikipedia

 

Next morning at the airport, Eames is pleasantly surprised to learn that Arthur has booked him a business class ticket.

“Cheers,” he says to the dull-eyed Arthur, who’d checked in and been waiting for an hour before Eames arrived, carrying a leather duffle bag around his shoulder and wearing his fragile heart on his sleeve for having to leave the first country he has come to love in a long while. “You must be doing very well.”

“I am,” Arthur says dryly, and Eames immediately stops feeling bad for having arrived just in the nick of time, preventing Arthur from enjoying the lounge he was visibly aching for.

He really was doing well, as Eames finds out when they are boarding; Arthur had got himself a first-class ticket.

 

Apparently Business Class actually meant Front Row Seats in a Packed Cabin with No Legroom and No In-Flight Entertainment in the airline Arthur had chosen, and Eames' plans to catch up on some sleep during the three-hour flight is nullified when ten out of the thirteen passengers on board with him turn out to be made up of 2 different families of 5, and 4 of them children, all under the age of ten.

Eames doesn’t mind terribly though, when he ends up having a very unexpected and stimulating conversation about aircraft engines and, later, about Budapest, with a young man who introduces himself as an architect (topside, Eames gathers from the throwaway comments he makes about his job) from across the aisle, who also just happens to be rather ravishing; in addition to his delicious name - any parent who names their child Nicholas Monroe deserved a bottle of champagne with their bouquet of roses and mother/father's day card -, he is bright, with a sparkling wit, teeth and intelligence, and a kind of basic, child-like simplicity that Eames always finds irresistibly appealing (except in actual children, especially under the age of ten).

In all honesty, the man doesn't really feel like an architect; at least, not a serious one. He’s far too charming and effortlessly entertaining for that. But he has the most perfect mane of hair Eames has ever laid eyes on on another human being, not to mention the arse one can't help but notice when he gets up for a trip to the loo; Eames has half a mind to follow him there, but one of the bratty kids pretending to be a villain from a Batman film — led by a girl taunting the rest to catch up with her Batmobile — gets in the way.

For some reason the boy has his mouth covered with both hands the whole time, and Eames can't understand a word he is saying; then he trips and falls, which is pretty funny, until the mother comes over to pick him up and catches Eames laughing.

“I look forward to seeing you again, Mr Henson,” Nick says before they deplane, reading off the card Eames had handed him with a chrome-bright smile.

“Please, call me Tuck,” coos Eames, charmed by the way Nicholas reflects back Eames’ most devilish smile, not fazed in the least.

 

Outside the jet bridge it is drizzling lightly as fucking always and Eames instantly feels depressed.

Arthur, on the other hand, seems to come alive; there’s an extra spring in his step and his back is even straighter — how that is even possible, Eames does not know — with every stride he makes across the Arrivals floor. Eames could swear that he even hears a faint hum originating from Arthur's throat as he flicks through the Times, sipping the vanilla chai he'd got from a Pret (somewhat to Eames' surprise, as he'd always pegged Arthur for a double-espresso-from-a-nameless-street-cafe type; Ariadne had once confessed to him that she still had nightmares about the look Arthur had given her when she'd brought a Starbucks into their warehouse in Paris), apparently oblivious to the dreary view passing outside the window of the express train to Victoria.

Watching it all go by, Eames thinks wistfully of the balmy weather he’s left behind in Marrakech, and solaces himself with the thought of Nick’s card in his wallet, and of Aicha’s world-weary face lighting up at the presents he will bring back at the end of the trip.

He is still thinking longingly about the dusty streets of the medina as they load their - Arthur's - luggage into the back of a taxi outside of Victoria station and Arthur shows the cabbie an address on his phone, plunking into his seat with gusto as the car takes off; which is probably why he realises that they might not be headed to a hotel only when they are on the Marble Arch roundabout, with all the accommodation most obviously suited to Arthur's taste well to the east of the exit they were currently taking.

"Where are we going?" Eames asks, sounding a little more caught-off-guard than his dignity would prefer.

“A friend of mine’s away on holiday and asked me to house-sit for them,” replies Arthur cooly, once again typing away on his gleaming blackberry.

Eames goggles at his smooth, botox-evoking face. “You have a _friend_?"

Arthur doesn’t even look up as he doles out a calm, “Shut the fuck up."

 

Apparently Arthur's friend is real, and extremely well-off, at that.

Getting out of the taxi, Eames can’t help but gawk at the fully-detached 3-storey house by the canal he’d once cruised along on his Nan’s birthday in a waterbus. At least three people threw up that day; and uncle Johnny lost his wedding ring in the puke-attack.

The streets around the neighbourhood are quiet and wide, extraordinarily well-kempt with lush trees lining the sidewalks along with enough streetlights to keep a whole borough safe in some of the developing countries he’s lived in. There is a row of Barclays bicycles visible around the corner, reminding him of just how long he's managed to stay out of this awful city - he'd left England before the planning for them had even begun.

“Gotta hand it to you, Arthur; you really know how to pick your mates,” he mutters, as he falls behind the rolling wheels of Arthur’s Swiss Army carry-on. Ignoring him with characteristic expertise, Arthur presses the buzzer at the gate.

<Yes?> answers a bouncing voice, which Eames immediately recognises as Romi’s.

“It’s us,” Arthur says, and they are buzzed in with a clunk of the gate unlocking.

As they climb the staircase leading up to the front door, Eames finds himself feeling nervous. He hasn’t seen Romi in years. Ridiculous, really.

The door opens, and there she is, dressed in a brilliant vermillion blouse that falls at a perfect angle from her shoulders and looking absolutely indomitable.

“Hey, Arthur,” she greets him with her light, luminous smile. It fades when her gaze shifts to Eames, stooping awkwardly at Arthur’s elbow with a half-formed grin on his face.

“Hullo, Romi,” Eames croaks out, and sees the line of her mouth go flat and hard.

“Eames.”

Every one of the daggers shooting out of her eyes lands on the side of his face with a silent whoosh as they walk past her over the threshold, moving into the hallway — or, more aptly perhaps, the foyer.

“Blimey,” Eames hears himself mutter as he takes in the place.

Normally, this would be the type of upper-middle class English building Eames would use as an example of everything that is wrong with his country’s social hierarchy; the only circumstance he could see where this much space for ordinary-sized human beings wasn’t totally ridiculous is if it was taken up as a residence by an embassy — the absurd comedy of the hoity-toity discussing world relations eating crab canapés and finger sandwiches, it had always seemed to him, went nicely hand-in-hand with the laughable hubris of the architects responsible for monstrosities like this, whose inflated egos probably fed on the misguided belief that the glory of their colony-collecting, sunset-forbidding Empire would last forever.

However, this particular home appeared to be free of posture — it is uncluttered, airy without being pretentious, and the two large lounges on either side of the stairwell, glanced through half-open doors, are tastefully yet simply decorated despite the fact that each is about the size of an entire flat Eames would normally call a place of dwelling.

Plus, Arthur’s team certainly seemed to be making good use of all the space - the room on the right that looks like a study is already strewn with Romi's tools, rough draughts of plans and sheets of various model-building materials leaning against the wall. There's a drafting table by the tall window with a rudimentary model of what looks essentially like a maze, rolls of tracing paper leaning against the nook between the tabletop and the wall.

The other room - what Eames' parents would un-self-consciously call a _drawing room_ \- seems relatively untouched, possibly with the intention to make it appear, to a nosy passer-by who might peek in, as nothing more than an unassuming living area whose only noteworthy characteristics are the expensive-looking drapery and upholstered furniture matching in tone, complete with a grand piano and an unimposing yet suitably elegant fireplace.

He is busy absorbing the niceness of it all when somebody comes up the stairs from the yet-to-be-discovered lower-ground floor area, and Arthur's voice and a hand on his back snap Eames back to attention.

“Eames, this is Robin. Robin, this, is Eames.” There's the subtlest hint of something in the way Eames' _this_ is said, but he chooses not to dwell on it.

“How do you do,” he blurts automatically, embarrassed at having missed her approach.

“How-do-you-do-,” Robin replies, slowly bringing up a hand to shake his.

Struck by her sloth-like tone, Eames blinks at her face, which also startles him, in more than one way: the most outstanding one being how strongly reminiscent of Dopey the dwarf it is, if he were Buddhist and had a full head of hair.

Her mannerisms would suggest that she's in her late twenties - and yet, her - granted, Asian - face is completely unlined; the smiling, slightly drowsy expression and the small, stocky stature remind Eames of a child just approaching puberty, still androgynous and somewhat exceptional in its zen-like composure.

In fact, the general impression she gives is that of a very spiritual, and wonderfully benevolent, gnome; Eames would reprimand his subconscious for being rude if Robin's relaxed, good-natured aura didn't make it seem so much like she wouldn't mind it in the least if his mouth were to accidentally say it out loud.

Eames decides that he likes her very much, and when Robin, in the same, warm, dozy tone as before says to him, "Nice-to-meet-you-," he believes it.

"The pleasure's all mine, Robin. May I call you Robin?" he asks, the accommodating smile he usually put on when trying to make a favorable impression genuine, for once.

Robin blinks slowly at that, then smiles - it's a beautiful, limpid smile, and Eames is ready to hug her when Arthur interrupts brusquely with a harsh nudge to his elbow.

"Alright, introduction's over. I'll show you your room."

Robin smiles at that, too, as though Arthur wasn't the most tightly-coiled ball of killjoy ever to walk the earth.

"We'll-put-the-kettle-on," she simply sing-songs, making to head downstairs. Romi follows her, glare fixed on Eames, and he hurries up the stairs after Arthur just to escape from the burning hole she's boring into his head.

 

On the first floor, directly facing the landing, is a door through which Eames glimpses another, smaller study with a handsome semicircular window letting in plenty of natural light -grey though it may be-, in front of which sits a wooden writing desk more modest than the huge mahogany pedestal downstairs, complete with a white ikea work lamp, two spherical wooden paperweights and a slim, obsidian pencil holder with exactly three -black, jade and silver- Mont Blancs in it. He figures that to be the one Arthur is using.

He catches more of the room as he follows Arthur down the corridor to the left, and sees another desk, arranged at a right angle to Arthur's, with pictures of an Indian family stuck on the wall behind it, framed by a garland of pink marigolds hanging in an ogee-shaped arch. There's a 15-inch macbook pro on the desk, a ruler, some pencils and pens tossed over an A5-sized sketchbook; a fluffy, pink cushion spills out of the seat of the chair tucked into it. Romi must be keeping all her model-building to the big study downstairs.

Walking past it, he guesses there are two more desks in the room; which turns out to be the case exactly, when he's told to unpack his work stuff - i.e. his notebook, a loud 2007 Lenovo laptop and a pencil - on the desk farthest from the window. --- "Do you have a problem with my face, love?" he asks when he sees the position of his desk, arranged so that it's facing away from the rest of the room. Arthur blinks blankly for a moment, before letting out a reflective "Huh," like Eames’ question just illuminated something he hadn’t realised before. Deciding that any further pursuit of the subject would only prove to be even more insulting, he lets the matter drop. ---

But first there is the bedroom, situated on the left end of the corridor.

"Oh my. Did you darlings decorate, just for me?" Eames asks with a hand to his breast, when he sees what is inside the door that Arthur jerks open with an inelegant twist of the knob.

"Yes, we thought you might like it," replied Arthur humourlessly.

In addition to being absolutely loaded, it seemed that Arthur's friend had a - hopefully pre-teen - daughter with a penchant for every commercial claptrap aimed at aspiring princesses. Eames assumes it is a girl because the cerise neon sign hanging over the bed’s headboard reads _Lizzie_. The lettering is surprisingly lovely.

Eames can feel the silent, sadistic glee emanating from Arthur as they look around the room, but honestly, he doesn't much mind the full, four-wall mural of Cinderella taking a rather convoluted stroll through the seemingly boundless expanse of the Neuschwanstein castle grounds under the moonlit sky filled with characters from Peter Pan in their nighties, arms outstretched in the air as though reaching for something in the distance — some benzodiazepines, perhaps? — ; in the foreground on the grass, Dumbo is crouching, apparently fascinated by the little mouse in a —— bellhop uniform? marching under the young elephant's trunk as Snoopy flounders, mid-fall, under the flying Wendy, having slipped on a possibly metaphorical banana peel.

He can also take into stride the colony of dollhouses that occupies the corner of the room, by the chest of drawers that's drowning under the various stuffed animals of all shapes and sizes, and it's not like he's never thought about having his very own plastic, magenta vanity table upon which to organise a flower-shaped makeup box and an assortment of eau-de-toilets, each featuring a different Disney Princess's face printed on an oval-shaped sticker inside the bottle. The only thing is that the canopied bed is definitely a single, and he was a bit of a heavy tosser in his sleep. But he's sure he can manage — after all, the My Little Pony night light — winged, sky-blue with a rainbow mane and tail — is there to keep the night terrors at bay.

"Well, I'm going to take a shower," Arthur announces loudly, showing no interest whatsoever in Eames' inner monologue once his gloating timer runs out.

"Do whatever you have to do to--- settle in, then come downstairs to the kitchen. There's a lot to go over."

With that, he's out the door, leaving Eames to wonder, _where can I hang my hamsa?_

Eames is unzipping his bag when he hears Arthur's crisp shoe-clicks halt mid-climb up the stairs to the top floor, do a little backtrack, before Arthur's deep, booming voice calls down the corridor: "Oh, Eames, brush your teeth, if you're not gonna wash anything else."

Kneeling on the carpet with his arms frozen around the bag, Eames blinks as the footfalls continue merrily up the rest of the way and disappear behind the sound of a shutting door.

3 more weeks of this.

From the bottom of his heart, he regretted not having brought more hamsas with him; it seemed clear to him now that when Yusuf offered his pearls of wisdom, Eames should take them without question — the conniving, slippery lizard of a man he was at heart notwithstanding, where there was no possibility of fiscal opportunity involved, Yusuf's perception of the world was unclouded and astute; which was more than Eames could say for himself at the moment, surrounded by the ugliest shades of pink and blue, and was going to have to make do with the coat hook on the back of the bedroom door to hang his hamsa on.

He sighed, and tried to focus on the positive. At least there was an en-suite bathroom.

He tells himself that he's fine, really totally fine, with the Hello Kitty mat, step stool and towel set.

 


	3. A Brief Interlude

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> [A Brief Interlude](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5YPJyAfJQUw) by Andrew Bayer

It was a clear, cloudless night.

The air was crisp and fresh, just bordering on chilly.

Warming her hands on the heat of her own tummy through the pockets of the hoodie she had zipped up to her chin, Karen blinked at the faintly glimmering line of stars in the sky - the handle of the Plough, more visible tonight than usual, kept disappearing and reappearing as the dark silhouette of Arthur's hand waved through the air, punctuating his words with an emphatic jerk every now and then.

"...the thing is, none of them can be his true equals. That's why he has Robin. You know? Because he's the only one who can really understand what Bruce Wayne went through, as a kid. I mean, yeah, Cat Woman had a mother who killed herself and a father who drank himself to death, but they weren't _murdered_. It's different."

Taking in a deep lungful of breath through her nose, Karen stifled a yawn; it was nearly two o'clock. Lights-out had been more than three hours ago.

"He's like--- He's like Watson to Batman's Sherlock. Maybe. Wait. Does that make Alfred Mrs Hudson? ---It doesn't matter. The point is, even a tortured vigilante like Batman, or especially a tortured vigilante like Batman, needs a sidekick, not just to help him fight crime but also to talk to. Or at least just to _be there_ , knowing what it's like to have gone through all the shit that he has, you know?"

He paused, and realising that he was waiting for a response, Karen nodded just in time before Arthur could suspect her of dozing off on him.

"I-think-so-," she added, just to make sure. Arthur got mad easily.

With a huff, he dropped his hands to his chest and crossed his ankles, in the same, angry way he talked.

"I'm telling you, living in Gotham would be so much better than being stuck here," he said, voice still sizzling.

This time, Karen made no reply; partly because she didn't have sufficient knowledge about this Gotham place to form an opinion, and partly because the last part of the remark was pretty much Arthur's mantra by now.

Something rustled in the rank overgrowth on the forest floor around them; then it was gone, and the night was quiet again, underscored by the tree leaves susurrating soothingly over their heads.

For a few moments they lied in silence, stretched out side-by-side on the grass, and with each rise and fall of his chest Arthur seemed to calm down a little, though she could still hear the cogs in his head whirring away.

“I can’t wait to get out of this place,” Arthur said, the steam in his voice mostly gone now, almost like a refrain to a song that he couldn't get to stop playing.

 

He had been buzzing with it since the first day he arrived at Caterham, a.k.a. _this place_. Karen wasn’t entirely sure how he, every syllable still steeped in unadulterated American accent, had ended up in a boarding school in the middle of Surrey — he had mentioned something about his father being in the military and their family moving around a lot, but she never asked after it; Arthur seemed unhappy enough about it as it was.

In a school where the majority of the pupils were born-and-bred English, Arthur and Karen stuck out for different reasons; Karen was from Hong Kong, and Arthur, whilst being an English-speaking Caucasian male with no apparent physical abnormality other boys could make fun of, simply refused to fit in.

It had been just over a year ago when Mr Taylor introduced him to the rest of 5B — “Everyone, this is Arthur, who’ll be joining us from today. Please make him feel welcome — and don’t be shy to show him around, you all know how it feels to get lost on your first day.”

Lanky, with his un-ironed shirt with a badly knotted tie at the collar a little too big around his frame, he’d simply glowered from under his hair; and throughout the rest of the form room period, he’d sat in a murderous silence, breaking bits off of the lead of a pencil he had found rolling about on the table.

So Karen wasn’t too surprised when, after the bell had rung for their first class of the day, everyone filed out in their usual rowdy, chattering packs, without glancing twice at Arthur, who was still sitting gloomily with the now unusable pencil in a death-grip, and Mr Taylor asked her (she liked to wait until the traffic cleared out) to show him to Maths — he was in the advanced class, too.

Sitting next to him proved to be an interesting experience; apparently new to using a fountain pen, he cursed out loud, more than once, at the ink that kept spilling onto his writing, over everybody else’s quiet scribbling of calculations; the first two times got him a warning, and the fifth, a detention.

Karen figured that would help him mix in with the other kids — boys loved trouble, and a detention on the first day (in the first lesson) was nothing less than a record. Sure enough, as soon as the bell rang, he was surrounded by a swarm of boys all exclaiming how ‘wicked’ that was, and asking if he’d do it again in the next class. Extracting herself from the barricade of armpits that had formed around their table to get to Geography, Karen thought, good for him.

So when a hand pulled up a chair across from her in the canteen at lunch and she looked up to see Arthur sitting down with a sullen scowl, she found herself staring — something she hadn’t done since she'd seen her uncle swallow an entire plate of chicken dim sum in one go at New Year’s dinner and her mother told her it wasn’t polite to stare.

“Man, those guys are fucking annoying,” Arthur spat, dropping his tray with such force that his banana rolled over to another side.

Despite herself — her mother had also told her that schadenfreude was something to be savoured on the inside only —, Karen smiled; there was something in the way Arthur spoke that tickled her sense of humour, which also didn’t happen every day.

Either not noticing or not caring, Arthur continued to frown down at his food, which he looked at like it might attack him at any moment.

“…Where are you from?” he asked, after a beat filled with the din of people eating and shouting and throwing cutlery at each other. As he did, he poked suspiciously at the fried cod on his plate.

“Hong-Kong,” she answered, still chewing some peas.

“Oh, I lived there for, like, six months,” Arthur said immediately, picking up a knife. “But I was, like, three years old, so I don’t remember much. Is it nice there?” Without looking up, he proceeded to impale the fish with the blade.

“It’s-al-right,” she replied, watching the cod’s body get butchered in half.

“How long have you been here?” he asked, and Karen wasn’t sure if he meant the school or the country, but since the two happened to be the same, she simply said, “Three-years.”

Arthur paused at that, and looked at her.

“Do you have family here?”

“My-Aunt-lives-in-Gla-sgow.”

“What about your parents?” he asked, gaze as intense as his grip on the silverware.

“They-live-in-Hong-Kong,” she answered, trying not to feel like she was being interrogated.

With a violent huff, Arthur shook his head.

“Shit. That’s tough, man. That’s tough.”

For a minute they ate in silence — well, Karen ate, while Arthur continued to dissect the fish until each piece assumed a different geometric shape, loose bits of the fillet crumbling off their sides.

“…So what do you do on weekends?” he asked again, moving on to the peas.

Karen tried to think. There was the town centre, where a lot of the girls liked to shop; or the Kebab place, that did possibly the best-tasting chicken donner you could get in the area; but somehow she got the feeling that Arthur wouldn’t be interested.

“Just-hang-out, I-guess,” she said, after a prudent consideration.

She half-expected Arthur to interrogate her some more on that, but all he did was to let out a, “huh,” and resume crushing the peas with the prongs of his fork, before peeling his banana and munching it down in three massive bites.

“This banana is shit,” he said when he’d finished, throwing the skin down by the plate in disdain.

 

That Saturday, Arthur showed up at the girls' house after breakfast, asking for Karen.

“Wanna go for a run?” he asked, already in his sports kit - a white polo shirt and black running shorts - when she came down from her room, his feet kicking at the carpet restlessly as Mrs McDurphy, the matron, gave him an evil eye through the window of her office.

“Let-me-go-get-changed,” she had said, before climbing back upstairs.

Emily and Tanya, who’d been coming down all dressed and ready to go out, goggled at Arthur as she passed them, before approvingly whispering to her, “He’s fit!”

 

For someone who moved as little possible during P.E. classes, Arthur was a surprisingly enduring runner, and seemed only mildly out of breath by the time they’d finished about ten laps around the track.

Karen was lying on the ground, trying to get her breath back, when Arthur, sitting up with his drawn-up knees spread wide as if in defiance, murmured, “By the way, I like guys.”

Blinking, it took about five full breaths for Karen to fully understand what he meant. When she did, she looked at him, at the back of his head and the rise and fall of his narrow shoulders shining brightly under the sun.

“I-see-,” she’d replied; there didn’t seem much else to be said.

They spent the rest of the day exploring the woods surrounding the school premise — something that hadn’t occurred to Karen to do in the last three years she’d spent here. At around mid-afternoon, they came across a small clearing at the back of the girls’ house; Arthur had stretched out there, with a sigh that sounded almost like relief; then he looked at Karen with an expression vaguely resembling contentment and said, “This is our spot.”

It surprised Karen how much she liked those words; it didn’t surprise her as much when the following night, after Mrs Stephens had done her rounds, she heard something hitting at her window and looked out to see Arthur standing underneath it, loudly telling her in what he must have thought of as his whispering voice, “Meet me at the Spot.”

 

When they weren’t hanging out at the Spot (usually on nights and weekends), Arthur played the piano; since there wasn’t one in the boys’ house, he came over to play in the girls’ common room — ever since they’d installed a TV in the adjoining rec room, it’d become mostly deserted.

“My mom made me play since I was four,” he said, almost as though excusing himself, before proceeding to play a beautiful rendition of what Karen later learned to be Debussy’s _Clair de Lune_ ; when Ellie Walker, having heard the music playing, stuck her head through the door, Arthur shot at her one of his homicidal looks until she backed out of the room, terrified.

Happily, Karen would sit on the wide, unoccupied couch, hardly noticing the frayed fabric and the foodstains, doing her coursework for Chemistry or History as Arthur played piece after piece, sometimes pausing to work on a particularly difficult fingering, sometimes making up tunes as he went along.

 

Then there were lunch breaks that were too short for excursions in the woods and musical exercise; those, he unfailingly spent in the library — either rifling through the Sci-fi novel section to pick out his next read ("You haven't read Odd John?! Okay, I'm lending you my copy."), or hunched over the few issues of Batman they had on display.

“Oh, this one is called Clayface, and if a piece of him gets separated from his body, it can grow a mind of its own. If it attaches to you, then you get his abilities — you can melt shit, and not die if you get shot or stabbed or whatever.”

“ _She_ used to be a doctor. Then she fell in love with Joker, who treated her like shit, but she didn’t care and in one story line, Joker dies, and she sells everyone out so she can get her hands on his skinned face, and then she puts it over another villain’s real face so she can ‘keep talking with Joker’.”

“Bane! He’s so gay, though really fucking cool. He speaks, like, four different languages, and he can lift up to 15 tonnes. He grew up in a prison — and when he was a kid, he carried around this little teddy bear with a knife hidden inside it and called it Osito — it means little bear in Spanish. Isn’t that fucking genius? So fucked up. So awesome.”

 

Mostly though, they hung out at the spot, like tonight.

It was like something in Arthur came loose here — he talked about things he wouldn't anywhere else, and in moments like these, seemed almost relaxed. In fact, it occurred to Karen, he hadn't got a single detention in almost half a year; Nature really was healing.

"When all this bullshit is over, I'm gonna do something bad-ass," Arthur murmured, bringing Karen back to the rapidly cooling night.

"Like-what-?" she asked, bending her fingers inside the pockets to see if they still worked.

Arthur seemed to think for a minute.

"...I don't know. Definitely not military, or anything to do with the government. Fuck all that. Something..."

Hearing Arthur's vision unfold, Karen turned her eyes to Polaris. In about a hundred years, it would begin to veer away from Earth's Northern axis. It always made her feel strange to think about that. A little sad and liberating at the same time.

"Something, just, out-of-this-world. I don't really care what it is. As long as it's awesome."

Karen reflected on that. Arthur could be like this sometimes; almost overly matter-of-fact one minute, then so unashamedly idealistic the next that it took a while for her to catch up.

Next to her, Arthur squirmed a little at the shoulders. Karen could sense the tension seeping back into them.

After what felt like a moment of loaded silence, Arthur spoke, an audible weight in his voice that hadn't been there before.

"Do you remember when my dad came to visit, a couple of weeks ago?"

"Uh-huh," Karen answered, remembering how the day before the visit, Arthur had warned her not to even come near the boys' house between 11am-4pm; 'Nothing good can come from his knowing your face', he'd said, perfectly serious.

"When we were in the dining room, I heard him talk about something on the phone."

Karen waited, attention sharpening. It wasn't like Arthur to hesitate.

"Something about--- Sharing dreams. It has something to do with training soldiers so they can get used to a real fight, without actually getting hurt. Like virtual reality, I guess."

Karen blinked. Was he supposed to be talking about this?

"I mean, as far as I could tell, they weren't just talking about it — he was saying stuff like trials and improvements and protocols. If that's true — if it's really happening, right now — just imagine." Arthur paused, as if encouraging Karen's imagination to take flight. "Some time, somebody, somewhere down the line, is going to use the technology for something else. Criminals. Terrorists. It's gonna be crazy."

Crazy definitely seemed to be the right word.

Maybe the library should put a cap on how many science fiction titles a student could take out per month.

"And then, there's gonna have to be someone to stop the bad shit from getting out of control." Arthur's voice was glowing with excitement.

"Like-Bat-man?" Karen asked, half-serious.

"Yes!" Arthur barked, making Karen silently jump out of her skin.

"Exactly. Like Batman. And shared dreams are going to be our Gotham."

Our? Karen thought.

"I mean, seriously. Wouldn't that be totally kick-ass? Fighting crimes in dreams."

Arthur breathed, as if the possibilities were too much for the confines of his ribcage.

"I'm telling you, Karen, something mind-blowing is gonna happen, and I'm gonna be in the middle of it."

Well, Karen thought, as her grandmother purportedly always said, it never hurt to dream big.

Of course, Karen's _parents_ encouraged her to focus on staying in the top 5 percentile, and working toward getting into a good uni, but she'd never had a problem with it; she liked life as it was, and unlike Arthur, there was no burning in her heart for something else.

So for the rest of the year, every time Karen saw Arthur with a book on the techniques of Lucid Dreaming — different one every week, it seemed —, reading them over meals and sometimes during Religious Studies — Mr Pattinson never noticed —, all it made he think was that it was so characteristically Arthur, how could one feel anything for him but endearment and a little bit of awe?

On the last day of school, after she had finished her A-level exam in Chemistry, she walked into her room to finish packing her things and found lying on her desk a battered copy of a Robin comic book — the brightly clad lad in green, red and indigo was launching at the reader from a car's bonnet with a rather ferocious look on his face — with a note on top of it.

In Arthur's almost illegible handwriting, full of jutting spikes and incomplete tail-ends of ys and fs, it read:

 

_To Karen_

_Thank you for being the best Robin any Batman could have asked for._

_You are the best friend I have ever had._

_Don't forget me._

_Arthur_

 

And scribbled at the bottom, in a less assured, fuzzier hand:

 

_P.S. I love you_

 

Then, in a slightly different hand, as though it was written at a different time:

 

_P.P.S. As a friend_

 

Then, in the same hand:

 

_P.P.P.S. But a lot_

 

It would be 11 years before Karen saw him again.

 

He is holding a dripping umbrella and silver brief-case when he shows up on the doorstep of the pharmacy she's working at, on a rainy night in North Point.

"Got an umbrella stand I can borrow?" he says, smiling.

Which means that the first thing she gets to say to him in 11 years is, "It's-by-the-door-." Couldn't he have looked around a bit more?

Arthur's face breaks into a full grin at that, everything creasing and stretching in ways that make Karen feel funny. It's a strange experience, your body recognising something you don't remember.

"I know," he says, sounding at once exactly the same and completely different as the boy she'd known. "I just wanted to say something cool when I saw you again."

A beat, as Karen stares at him, for the second time, trying to take it all in.

This Arthur is taller than the one Karen remembers - he's older, certainly, and the parts of him that meet the eye are smoother around the edges, and at the same time more solid.

But all it takes is a twitch of a dimple that pulls at something Karen didn't even know was there, and then it's all flooding back — his weird sense of humour and unexpected dramatics and a flat-out-refusal to be ordinary, and she can't do anything but laugh because she's never been very good with words and everything she's feeling has to come out somehow and———

"...And, Karen, I need a Robin," Arthur says, the beatific grin turning into something more measured.

And all Karen can think is, —Well, Arthur's back.

And even though it takes her three weeks of research, lots of take-outs eaten at her flat, arguments with Arthur over who'll do the dishes and who'll vacuum (Arthur's adamant that she shouldn't do neither as long as she's still working full-time at the pharmacy), plus 5 PASIV-induced field experiments (in one of which they re-live the day Arthur pulled Jonathan Vodden at the ball then got asked out by Amanda Hariet whose father was a minister and thought —out loud— that she could 'save' him) to say _yes_ , some part of her already knows the answer as she takes that first step over to hug him, because if she'd been better at saying stuff in words, and if she'd been given a proper chance to say goodbye the last time, what she would like to have said, in response to Arthur's note, is: You're welcome, you too, I won't, and, again, you too. 

She thinks she might be able to, some day. 

After all, mind-blowing things really do happen in life — and Arthur will always be there, in the middle of it.

 

 

*Quick note regarding the future uploads of the series: RL is proving rather demanding at the moment, and I would like to let you all know that the series will continue, when things have calmed down a bit. This may take a couple of months, though, so please be patient and enjoy yourselves in the meantime with the myriad of other brilliant works by everyone at AO3! :)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> P.S. I have no ownership over/affiliation with the video linked in chapter summary. Just happened to come across it and thought it was nice :)


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